this is cnn breaking news. welcome to the lead, everyone. we start with breaking news at any moment a deal could be reached to release some hostages taken from israel by hamas on october 7th. right now, the full israeli cabinet is meeting to give what is believed to be a final approval of the deal. just moments ago israeli prime minister benning anyone netanyahu asked the cabinet to support the deal and reminded the world we are at war and will continue at war. out of 240 people kidnapped by hamas 50 would be release. hostages will be visited by the red cross. three palestinian prisoners in israel will be freed for every civilian hostage released. it also calls for a four to five day pause in fighting. the majority of hostages who would be released in this deal is children. one is a 3-year-old, the youngest american held hostage whose parents were killed by hamas. her great aunt spoke to cnn today and was understandably emotional at the prospect of seeing her niece come h
regime. but the question is now can they govern themselves without a murderous dictator like saddam? i think they can but the jury s out. i m curious, do you see anything coming in the way of bringing home all of our troops? i m not talking about the combat troops. all of them, about 50,000, are supposed to be home by the end of summer, in august. but the rest of them, do you envision a scenario in which we have to have peacekeeping type of soldiers there that stay longer than the projected end of 2011? we ve had most of our combat troops, by the way, off the streets and back on brigade forward operating bases the better part of a year. casualty rate, thank god, in iraq has gone to near zero. the war that s going on is in afghanistan, not iraq. i think combat troops will come out, there will be a significant presence until next summer. it s possible we d stay longer with substantial amounts of air power, intelligence, special ops, trainers, but the iraqis